Today, July 30, 2020 at 7:50 a.m. EDT (11:50 UTC) NASA’s Mars 2020 rover Perseverance launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida aboard a ULA Atlas V 541 rocket. The weather at the Cape was picture-perfect and the launch went smoothly, sending NASA’s newest robotic mission to Mars on its way for an anticipated arrival and landing…
Tag: launch
Watch America’s Return to Flight Launch Live!
Just a reminder that you can watch today’s launch of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, carrying NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the Space Station from Kennedy Space Center’s historic Pad 39A, live right here on Lights in the Dark!
Watch Incredible Launch Pad Footage of the Apollo 11 Liftoff
The Saturn V line of heavy launch vehicles used for NASA’s Apollo program were still to this day the most powerful rockets successfully flown, and this video shows an intimate on-pad view of the ignition and liftoff of the Saturn V SA-506 that launched Apollo 11 to the Moon at 13:32 GMT on July 16, 1969….
Take a Ride with Alan Shepard Aboard Freedom 7
On this day in 1961, May the 5th at 9:34 a.m. Eastern time, NASA astronaut Alan B. Shepard, Jr. became the first American to travel into space with the launch of his Freedom 7 vehicle atop a Mercury-Redstone rocket. Shepard reached an altitude of 116.5 miles during his 15-minute suborbital flight before splashing down in…
NOAA’s Newest Satellite Sends Its First Pictures of Earth…and the Moon!
America’s newest next-generation Earth observing weather satellite, NOAA’s GOES-16, has returned its first high-definition images of Earth—one of which even includes the Moon!
First Flight of the Lunar Module, 49 Years Ago Today
49 years ago today, at 5:48 p.m. on Jan. 22, 1968, a stocky Saturn IB roared into the sky from Pad 37B at Kennedy Space Center taking the Lunar Module on its first flight into space. The uncrewed Apollo 5 mission would put LM-1 through a series of tests in low-Earth orbit, making sure that…
NASA Readies OSIRIS-REx to Visit an Asteroid
NASA is about to embark on its first mission to sample an asteroid—and I’ll have a front-row seat to the launch! On Thursday, Sept. 8, at 7:05 p.m. (23:05 UTC) the launch window opens for the launch of OSIRIS-REx, NASA’s mission to visit the near-Earth asteroid Bennu, orbit and map it, collect a sample and…
Juno Just Hours from Jupiter Arrival
After nearly 5 years of traveling through space NASA’s Juno spacecraft is just a few dozen hours away from entering orbit around Jupiter, the Solar System’s largest, most massive, and most extreme planet. “We are ready,” said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI). “The science team is incredibly excited…
Take a Ride with Alan Shepard Aboard Freedom 7
55 years ago today, at 9:35 a.m. EST on May 5, 1961, NASA astronaut Alan B. Shepard, Jr. became the first American to travel into space with the launch of his Freedom 7 vehicle atop a Mercury-Redstone rocket. Shepard reached an altitude of 116.5 miles during his 15-minute suborbital flight before splashdown in the Atlantic,…
Watch Incredible High-Speed Footage of the Apollo 11 Saturn V Liftoff
The Saturn V line of heavy launch vehicles used for NASA’s Apollo program were to this day the most powerful rockets ever used, and this video shows an intimate on-pad view of the ignition and liftoff of the one that carried Apollo 11 into space on July 16, 1969. Captured at 500 frames per second, the…
What Can Hubble See? Find Out in This Music Video
Get into a little “Hubble trouble” with this music video by NPR’s Adam Cole, aka Skunk Bear. Produced in honor of the 25th anniversary of the space telescope’s launch aboard Discovery STS-31 on April 24, 1990, the video is a parody of Iggy Azalea’s “Trouble” and, in my opinion, surpasses it astronomically. (See what I did…
Space Is Hard, and So Are the Decks of Drone Ships
On Tuesday, April 14, SpaceX launched its Dragon cargo vehicle aboard a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, sending over two tons of supplies up to the crew of the ISS. While the launch was a success and everything went smoothly for Dragon’s CRS-6 mission (despite a single day’s launch delay due to weather) the…
Lights in the Dark 